


Ways of Exile

by Prinzenhasserin



Category: Original Work
Genre: 17th Century, Fluff and Humor, Happy Ending, M/M, Magical Realism, Romantic Fluff, Selkies, The Dutch Golden Age of Painting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-13 11:49:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18031187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prinzenhasserin/pseuds/Prinzenhasserin
Summary: Skalugsuak, a greenland shark selkie born 200 years ago, makes his first landfall in years and meets a very intrigued merchant named Leendert. The selkie, however, doesn't want to be distracted by this very handsome stranger since he is looking for the person who caused him much difficulty. Will Skalugsuak forsake revenge to get closer to Leendert?





	Ways of Exile

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sath/gifts).



> Dear Sath. This was originally written for f5k last year, but I borrowed from other letters and that means I'm not at all sure if you'll like it -- I tried my very best! Special thanks to the many people who were a part of writing this story, including iberiandoctor, l_cloudy, and Isis. Without you, this would be more incoherent than it is :P
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _Who liveth alone longeth for mercy,_  
>  Maker's mercy. Though he must traverse  
> Tracts of sea, sick at heart, –  
> Trouble with oars, ice-cold waters,  
> The ways of exile–Wyrd is set fast.

Skalugsuak managed to land on the beach only with the help of the flood tide pushing him over the last few lengths. Finding the exact landing place had taken him longer to find than he ever cared to admit and frankly, being confused by the erosion of the bay would have been embarrassing for a child, let alone the almost 200-year-old that he was. He shook off the seaweed in which he had gotten tangled, looking around suspiciously to see if someone had witnessed his fight with his natural element. But the beach was empty, of people and people forms at least, the rolling tide loud at his back. The weather was comfortably wet, the sky grey and foreboding. It was the best weather he could have expected, much better than the unbearably hot summers they got this far south.

It wasn’t his first time on land, of course, but it was the first in a few years. He carded through the hair on his head, unfamiliar to him after the long while he'd been spending in his other body, and vaguely wondered if this expedition was worth the trouble. He could have just let himself fall into the Marianas Trench until he was unrecognisable as himself and no bother to anyone. Fallen into the abyss, none of his emotions would matter, and wouldn’t that be the best solution for everyone? His side stretched uncomfortably and reminded him of his purpose: he hadn’t spent the twenty years with a spear in his side, surviving only through sheer orneriness to give up now. The wound had forced him to become stagnant, to be the same shark day in, day out. Staying the same just wasn’t a part of his nature. Selkies were ever-changing and to be forced into one skin was pure torture.

He took the last step towards land, losing his last connection to the comforting saltwater. Beneath his feet , the wave was freezing, leaving a light-burst coating of ice behind every time it flowed onto land. He watched for a bit, hypnotised by the familiar sound of the roaring wind and the unfamiliar feeling of watching the water pull out and recede again and again. Skalugsuak didn't usually spend a lot of time near the shore. In fact, the last time he’d been on solid ground like this was back when his skin was fully intact, not missing the piece of his backfin that some adventurous whale hunter had taken out of his hide. 

That was also the reason he was ashore now: to find the person who had tortured him and then, perhaps, if Skalugsuak felt up to it, take revenge. That was mainly Muraina’s thing, however, and while she had aided him greatly on getting back to his feet, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to try out everything she had advised. 

The loud cracking sound of thunder dragged him out of his thoughts. He snatched up his skin that had pooled onto the beach when he had left the water and cried. Seven drops of tears to change his skin—he’d almost cried more in relief when finally, after so many years imprisoned in the shark skin, he could feel the change again.

The pelt felt warm on his human skin, much warmer than the air currents that made his feet tingle. Towards the left was an empty stretch of coast, sandy and boring, and on the right was the face of a cliff he could barely remember. Unlike in his memories of this coast, there were no human settlements. Which reminded him: he would need clothes, at the very least, since humans wouldn't have changed all that much in the past 100 years. Surely, humans wouldn’t have changed so much as to entirely drop the habit of wearing clothes to cover their bodies. He tried to remember if the fisherman who'd managed to harpoon him had worn clothes, but admittedly, he'd been a bit distracted by the agonising pain shooting through his steering fin. Just in case, he dragged the bit of cloth Muraina had included in his waxed seabag over his head. It preserved a bit of the cold of the water, although the warmth of the air made him shiver. With his hands in his bag, he rummaged around for the harpoon tip. It vibrated between his fingers—he was on the right path.

With a deep sigh he stepped up over the grassy crown of the shore bank, walking along the beach to the familiar sound of the waves crashing onto land.

Before long, his feet were leaking a strange fluid. They started turning red and blistering as if he’d been swimming across volcanic streams, and so he sat down on a stump of wood to look at them in more detail. They were also starting to hurt. The dripping clothes he’d been wearing were now only clammy, but the parts that had dried were rough on his skin and very uncomfortable. He wanted to strip out of them, wear only his pelt as a cloak, but he remembered enough about human customs to figure out that that was a bad idea.

He’d still not seen a single human. He remembered them being much more ubiquitous, back when he was a young adult. Even down in the depths, you could barely swim a half-stream without inevitably stumbling over some damned human. Once, just once, Skalugsuak wanted to wash onto an island in the middle of the ocean and not find humans already settled there. Now that he was actively looking for someone, however, suddenly he could not find any.

"Oh shit," a voice said from behind him. "That’s blood!" 

Skalugsuak turned to see a man emerge out of the greenery of the shore. He was very blond, and dressed in very colourful clothes showing off his poisonous nature. Or was that only fish? Skalugsuak hadn’t been near humans in a while. The human looked young, but then so did Skalugsuak and he was celebrating his 210 th year at air.

He had forgotten which human clothes served what purpose. He remembered only the inexplicable decoration humans wore on their heads, made out of some kind of white hair that was to denote wisdom or maturity and did neither, and left white spots of talc everywhere. Whigs, they were called, if he remembered correctly. He hoped they had gone out of style.

"Yes. Blood." Skalugsuak tried to look like that was why he was bewildered by everything, and not because he spent the last  few  decades down in the deep-waters trying to ignore the whale fall s disrupting the local ecology and upping traffic to unbearable levels. Skalugsuak could’ve taken a few creatures moving in, but the entire ecosystem changing was a bit much. The whale could have used a more convenient way to die, surely, or the currents could have drawn off his corpse a few miles to the south where it would’ve been right on the cave he had chosen for his recovery. There was no complaining about bygones, and he’d already complained bitterly at that time. It was as it was, there was no changing nature.

"Lord have mercy," the young person said. Skalugsuak squinted while he tried to figure out if that human looked familiar because it had been so long since he had seen one, or if he looked familiar because Skalugsuak had seen him before. "That looks painful!"

"Painful, yes," Skalugsuak repeated and tried to look like he was suffering only from the pain in his foot, and not also from the headache he had developed trying to figure out human customs.

"Did someone steal your shoes?" the human asked. His eyes were clear—like pearls, almost, unlike Skalugsuak dark eyes. He wore a lot of clothes compared to his own shirt and trousers. There was one bit of clothing on his head, even, that made him almost as tall as Skalugsuak. He was very dashing, Skalugsuak thought, standing above him on the top of the embankment. He wore heels to make himself taller, but he still wasn’t as tall as Skalugsuak at his full height. "Did someone steal the rest of your—" he gestured towards Skalugsuak’s body.

Apparently, he was not adequately dressed. Therefore, he answered looking up from his perch into his eyes,"Yes." 

There was something very familiar about this human’s bone structure. Skalugsuak broke eye contact, and then studied him carefully from the corner of his eyes. If he was honest with himself, the familiarity could also just be the vague human similarity. He had not seen a human in such a long time. What could the chance be that the first one he would meet was a relative of one he had known before? And, thinking of Jan the Painter, he remembered some long-forgotten memories—and felt a sudden embarrassment about the state of his clothes. Though they had spent the last few decades in a waxed bag, they were surprisingly intact, if smelly. “Excuse my manners, I’ve quite forgotten myself. I have been out of sorts—“

The young man waved him off. “I quite imagine being out of sorts myself, had I been the one to be robbed of all my earthly goods!”

“In any case, my apologies," Skalugsuak said. He stood up until he could look up from behind his long dark hair—Florian had always liked looking at the strange colours of his eyes. The other man stood just enough above him on the embankment, that Skalugsuak could manage without contorting himself further. "My name is Skalugskuak of  the  Denmark Strait the Second, and I have come here looking for my attacker."

"Goodness gracious," the man said. That also reminded Skalugsuak of his long-dead friend. It was quite eerie to see the resemblance. "As you are? You must be—distraught."

"Very," Skalugsuak said. "He managed to destroy my finest possession. I’ve lost my home and my livelihood to this maniac." 

The most important part of himself, his pelt, had been injured. There was no explaining to a human how much his pelt meant to him, and how dreadful it was for a selkie to lose all access to their magic, and with the pelt their ability to change at all. He knew of no greater violation.

His pelt had been pierced with a harpoon, deep enough in the water, thatwhen his lungs were shocked into competing with his gills, he’d grown loopy from lack of oxygen. In pain from the dissolved gases coming out of solution and forming bubbles in parts of his body where they didn’t belong, he’d lost control of himself. He had trundled down into the depths with the sickness continuing to hold him in his thrall, entirely out of mind with the wound. If nobody had not noticed what was happening to him, he might have died immediately. Instead, the Sea Witch Muraina had found him and treated his wounds until they were no longer life-threatening. His wound had taken long years to heal completely. During all this time he had been unable to change.

Twenty years ago he had been wounded. Now, he had come ashore to take revenge on the selkie hunter who had nearly killed him. He hoped the hunter had not caught a selkie on purpose-- the harpoon had been enchanted, however, and he very much doubted that it had been an accident.

Some of his friends would say his careless attitude about taking revenge only proved his mind had deteriorated. Skalugsuak didn’t care. He was going to take revenge on the stupid human who dared to hunt a shark selkie if only so that he wouldn’t do this to anyone else. 

There were two ways to imprison a selkie: take away the pelt so that they couldn’t go back to the sea—or injure the skin beneath their pelt, and they couldn’t go back to the land. A forced transformation either way. Skalugusak had spent the last twenty years imprisoned underwater.

It hadn’t helped, of course, that his roommate, the incomparable Muraina, had told him he should stop inventing revenge schemes and concentrate on the whale in front of him, not the one sinking down in the bay. Of course, she had also told him where the owner of the harpoon that had pierced his skin was located. Skalugsuak had never tried to figure out how she knew these things—her ability to find things was her own magic talent. Quite a useful talent, as far as magic went. Skalugsuak’s own talents had only ever brought him strife.

He had taken that as the cue to go off on his revenge scheme immediately. If strife would find you anyway, why not go looking for it? At least that way you were prepared. And looking at the man in front of him, the first ray of sunshine in quite some time, he had been making excellent decisions. His blond fur—hair—was sparkling even in the cloudy, over-hung sky, and he listened with a kind air to Skalugsuak’s tale of woe.

"The only clue I have of their whereabouts is the weapon they left stuck into my priceless artefact," Skalugsuak continued. He extracted the spearhead out of the fabric he had wound it in to preserve it from the salt water oxidation, and presented it on his flat hand. He didn’t mention the other hint his friend had given him—a name, and a seashell filled with the scent of his blood.

"Oh, wow. That looks like the head of a harpoon."

"It does, doesn’t it?" Skalugsuak said. It would have been stranger if it didn’t look like the barbed head of a harpoon, since that was what it was. "I’m hoping that that will lead me to the perpetrator. This has a maker’s mark, see—" He didn’t mention the spell cast on it, the one thing that would lead much faster to the perpetrator if Skalugsuak found the courage to confront him. He didn’t like to hunt head-on. He liked to circle his prey, pay attention so that he could evade its bites and poison.

The young man shrugged. "I wouldn’t know. I can barely make out the colour of your eyes. I don’t have the best eyesight."

Skalugsuak didn’t need to look at it anymore, the touch of the notch having been burned into his brain, and so he tucked the spearhead back into his satchel, and the young man followed the gesture with his eyes. They were so green as if to almost suggest photoluminescence. "A harpoon, huh?" the young man said. 

Skalugsuak couldn’t help but continue his staring. There was something very pleasing about the way the young man held himself, too. Skalugsuak smiled at him, and if his smile was a little too toothy to be entirely human, his new acquaintance was nice enough to overlook it.

"I’m Leendert," the young man said. "And I’m travelling on my family’s business, but it isn’t so urgent that I may forget my duty as a Christian. Perhaps you could accept my invitation to travel along with me until we arrive at the next town? There should be a cobbler and an inn at least, where you can freshen up and find appropriate clothing. It’s a wonder you only hurt your feet."

"I thought you were named Leendert, not Christian."

"Yes?" the young man asked, confused. Skalugsuak didn’t continue questioning it.

Instead, he looked down at his feet and said, "Perhaps I do need some help."

And the young man in front of him—Leendert— smiled, gifting him a show of brilliant teeth, gleaming white almost as if he was a shark and not a human himself, and said, "Wonderful! My carriage is just waiting over there." He pointed off into the distance, where, indeed, a carriage was waiting.

To Skalugsuak’s eyes, which hadn’t seen carriages in quite some time, it looked unremarkable. Non-descript black wood, wheels slightly smaller than he remembered, and pulled by two strong horses.That was the problem.

Horses.Skalugsuak had to go near them if he didn’t want to alienate his new acquaintance. For a brief moment, he hesitated: Was some small help really worth the inconvenience of going near horses? But yes, it was. And Leendert was very attractive which mitigated the sheer terror he felt somewhat. Something about horses made him want to slip back into his larger, more toxic form—because even if horses had fewer teeth, they were fast , and heavier than the average shark.

"Yes," Skalugsuak said, instead of admitting any of this. "A carriage. I see it. Lovely horses."

A man sat on the driver seat. He was waiting patiently and didn’t speak, his only greeting a tip of his hat. Closer up, the carriage was more elaborate than the simpler designs Skalugsuak was used to, but he figured that was just a sign of the times. Everything was getting more elaborate.

Gingerly, he followed Leendert into the small space, more hobbling than walking as the pain had become rather unbearable.

Upon seeing them approach, the driver jumped down from his perch—he was much older than Leendert ,  although much of his face was hidden behind a beard. 

"What happened?" he said with a gruff voice. He undid the cloth wrapped around his hand. Similar to Leendert, he was dressed top to bottom in clothing, although his had a brown hue and looked less shiny.

"Robbed of all his belongings," Leendert said curtly. "Apparently, their cruelty knows no bounds, leaving a man without his shoes in this weather."

The driver inspected Skalugsuak with a lot of suspicion, carefully taking in the waxed bag, then turning his gaze down to his bleeding feet. He grunted. It could have meant anything. 

Skalugsuak saw the sharp look Leendert sent him , though he couldn’t begin to decipher its meaning. It was strange, how different the world could become in only a few years. He felt like a youngling again, floundering between all the strange new impressions.

The driver crawled onto the carriage again to fetch a bag of indeterminate origin and came down again. In his hands were two rags of cloth, rough looking but without holes. He laid them onto the ground. "Step on them."

Despite the rather rude order, Skalugsuak did as he said. The driver wrapped the rags around his feet, then got up to survey his deed. He nodded, decisively. "M’name’s Jacques." He held out his hand in an obvious offer to shake it. There was a look to his face, as if he dared Skalugsuak to reject it, as if he had already made up his mind as to what kind of person Skalugsuak was. 

Skalugsuak took his hand, shook it, and then let go quickly. He looked away, getting caught in the gaze of Leendert who arched his brow and smiled at him.

"He better not have fleas like the last one," Jacques said to Leendert and then swung himself back to the perch.

Leendert kept smiling, and opened the carriage door in invitation. Inside, the carriage was decked out with pelts—furs, none of them looking like they were still alive. Skalugsuak sat down carefully. 

"There’s a popular post house further up, where we initially thought to stop for the day. Lucky, since you seem much in need of a comfortable place to stay." Leendert said, once he had sat down. He looked very comfortable nestled among the fancy fittings. The seats were very soft, almost feathery. On his left-hand side was a basket filled with bread and wine, and through the roof , he could see Jacques. Leendert waved towards the driver, and then closed the shutter with a latch. The carriage smelled mostly of seawater, and that faint tinge of oil that Skalugsuak was rather familiar with, although in very different circumstances. Curiously, he looked around, but there was no source immediately visible. "And at the supply station, there’s a rather comfortable inn with an excellent brewery for the comfort of the weary traveller. I’m sure they would know where to get harpoons—nothing to do up here but fish and gossip."

The barrage of words did nothing to conceal his nervousness. It only fuelled Skalugsuak’s innate curiosity, though it had been a long time since he had exerted his social graces. He wondered at the packages and trunks—did one of them conceal the coveted paints he had smelled? Florian would’ve loved to go travelling with the tools of his trade, but they were delicate and it had been much easier and lucrative to work out of his studio.

Skalugsuak had never forgotten his time with the artist, but when he tried visiting his grave, he’d been caught by the fisherman—a selkie hunter, surely.

"Is that why you’re travelling, too?" Skalugsuak, who remembered carriage rides a little too well, braced himself for the impact of the moving carriage. The wheels started rolling—and yet there was a curious lack of rough, impactful bounces. He shouldn’t have expected everything to stay the same, the human world moved fast, and he hadn’t been back for twenty years—longer than that if it meant living among humans. The fashions had changed, surely, and so had carriages, apparently.

"My father wants me to take care of some of his business ventures," Leendert said. He was a very cheerful person, but Skalugsuak’s instincts told him that this was more fraught a topic than he had intended. "But it is rather boring work, and I’m much more interested in you. Are you from hereabouts?"

"No," Skalugsuak said, admitting defeat on acquiring more knowledge about his erstwhile travel companion. "I was born just off the coast of Iceland."

"Thus the name," Leendert interjected.

The name was a human invention, necessary because humans generally didn’t trust strangers until they had at least a basic inkling about their life, even if none of it happened to be true. Skalugsuak had learned that earlier than most. But the mannerism of asking for names was catching. Skalugsuak liked his name, and he liked being named. "Yes," he agreed. "Thus the name. I understand it is rather unusual, but back home I am the third of its name."

"Very unusual!" Leendert laughed. "Is this your first time travelling? Your accent is very easy to understand."

"No, I lived here for years, a long time ago," Skalugsuak admitted. This entire trip was an experience down memory lane, as he was reminded constantly of his former companion.Florian was the reason he had stopped living on dry land and returned to the deep seas to drown his sorrow. It hadn’t really worked, as he’d been short-tempered about every little change to his surroundings. The whale fall and the subsequent upswing in socialisation with the upsurging fish population also kept reminding him of Florian and his house full of artists and other people of interest.

"It changed a lot," Skalugsuak added, because it had. Or at least, he could remember only half of it, and anyway, he was entirely confused by most of the human customs he’d experienced. Certainly, he’d never meet anyone as friendly as Leendert. There was a brief moment where he wondered if Leendert’s friendliness was sinister, but then he looked at the way he was fidgeting with the embroidery of his sleeve and the only thing he wanted to do was hold onto his hands.

He was enchanting, and there seemed to be a deeper purpose to everything he did, but Skalugsuak was pretty sure their encounter wasn’t going to end in a tragedy. His pelt was securely bound in his waxed bag, after all.

"Really? Woah," Leendert said. "I didn’t think you were old enough to have lived here for long." He smiled another charming smile.

"I am ancient," Skalugsuak told him, and then showed his teeth. Humans had always been weird about ages, however, and so he softened his words and expression. "I do suppose I’m rather forgetful about the memories that turned ugly."

"Oh no, what happened?" 

Another shock went through the carriage, this one more in line with what Skalugsuak had expected from the get-go. It stuttered to a stand-still, and then the driver knocked on the closed shutter.

Leendert opened it. Jacques opened the door further, and Skalugsuak could see buildings and properly cobbled streets. "Oh, I thought there was a problem," Leendert said, mostly to the driver. "We’ve arrived! That was quick." He seemed surprised, as if he thought the journey short. 

Skalugsuak, who had sat in the constricted room like a clam waiting for the tides, was about done with the world. There was much to be said about the streams of the ocean—even during the season changes, they were nothing to the bumps one got in simple carriage travel, or the foot bleeds one could catch with inappropriate footwear, apparently. 

He looked down on the rags around his feet. They looked robust enough for another few steps.

He could still smell the sea and when he turned he could see it, spread out beneath the green dam they had been travelling across. The post house in front of them—multiple buildings with obvious different purposes— was raised on pillars. The ground seemed to experience a lot of water overflow from the water just a few paces away, slick brown earth denoting the places where water would flow, though today it was just green lusciousness. It still smelled of bracken water, and wherever the water touched the wood and stone, Skalugsuak could make out faint salt marks. Most of the lands around here were never far from the sea. A symbol of great weight to Skalugsuak--the marriage of land and sea. He liked it here so much, he had spent decades of his life going in and out of its bays and ports.

The colours above the waterline really were very vivid. Down in the depths, he’d missed this when he was away.

"The cook does truly amazing things to herring," Leendert said, right next to him. Skalugsuak hadn’t noticed him beyond acknowledging that he had busied himself with the luggage, and was now rather surprised to have him so near. Leendert was very unobtrusive company,calming in a way, and Skaluguak wondered only briefly if that was affectation to better steal his pelt when his guard had lowered. Leendert added, as if he had turned something over in his mind and come to an awkward conclusion, "If you’re into that sort of thing."

Skalugsuak loved herring. Skalugsuak loved cooked herring, even, and didn’t know why Leendert had added the nonsensical statement. "I like fish of all kind," he said. "Except whale. I’ve eaten too much whale." There was an entire speech on how much he disliked whales, and their bodies, and Muraina had had to listen to it often. His preferences aside, there was nothing wrong with people eating what they ate. Though he would eternally look in askance on people eating poisonous flesh just because it gave them that nice tingle in the mouth. (He didn’t want to complain, he had eaten his share of strange foods, but there were certain lines that shouldn’t be crossed.)

Leendert chuckled and looked uncomfortable. Then, he shrugged and said, "Well, we don’t usually get whale around here for anything but, you know, the usual. Lamp oil and makeup."

That was not at all what Skalugsuak would think usual, but he still nodded as if he knew anything about it. Still, he hesitated. What had Leendert meant by leading him here? Was this where they should part ways, and Skalugsuak should follow the guidance spell his friend had cast on the harpoon formerly embedded in his fin? Since he had stepped on shore, it hadn't been working the way it had down in the depths. It was possible that sea magic just didn’t work on dry land, which would be terrible for finding his quarry. Still, there was that maker's mark. And he had found Leendert, who seemed a good diversion while he was trying to assimilate back into the human lifestyle. It was always such a cultural shock, to come back to the shore.

Leendert was waiting just beside him, and Skalugsuak didn’t know what the appropriate way to talk to a stranger who picked you up and brought you somewhere else was. If there even was an appropriate way to thank a stranger for picking you up—but knowing humans there was, and woe should befall him if he didn’t know what it was.

"Don’t you want to go in?" Leendert asked.

"I don’t—" Skalugsuak interrupted himself. "If you’re going in, then, of course, I shall accompany you. I don’t feel comfortable going on my own since I don’t have any money to pay for the services. I'd feel just as comfortable spending the night on— outside, somewhere."

"Oh," Leendert exclaimed. He seemed relieved. "I really can't let you spend the night outside. It gets frightfully cold, even though it may not seem like it yet. And you, with your lack of proper shoes and a coat! Don’t worry about the cost, I shall ask for rooms for both of us." And then, he maneuvered Skalugsuak through the largest entrance door to one of the timber-framed houses. On top of the gable, two horse-heads were united in something that was faintly reminiscent of the mating dance of seahorses. Skalugsuak assumed this was the place for sleeping--though he never figured out why sleeping and mating had been so intrinsically linked to humans. 

Inside, the timber-frames looked softer. It was hot, too--almost too hot-- and even though it was hardly night-time, the taproom was filled with people. None of them had looked up at their entrance, except the man behind the counter who didn't stop pouring ale but waved them over.

Skalugsuak followed meekly to the counter, where soon , the publican and Leendert were involved in a deep discussion what merited the two best rooms of the post house, and if the honored Sir might consider using the best room for two, instead. This went on for some time, as the price first reduced itself, and then went up again when Leendert persisted. "You wouldn’t want me to send people away to the other end of the bay? At night?" their host insisted, and Skalugsuak said, quietly, "I wouldn’t mind if you don’t. I don’t really need a bed anyway."

Leendert looked at him, clearly scandalised. "Don’t need a bed!"

"Why, my beds are very comfortable! There’s not a bug in sight," the host protested. Suddenly, they were on the same side again, teaming up against a common target. Skalugsuak might have appreciated the turnaround if he hadn’t been the target in question. "Surely, there’s no need to sleep on the floor, my good sir!"

"All right," Skalugsuak acknowledged and held up his hand in the universal gesture of calming people down. "I’m sure the bed is fine?"

"First floor, down the hallway to the end?" Leendert asked the host, and quickly grabbed the keys he had already set out.

"One stuiver for the night," the man demanded, and Leendert handed it over without argument.

Leendert had already been dragging him upwards, towards the staircase—but Skalugsuak could still hear very clearly, when the host shouted, "The pillows are down feathers from the finest white geese of the Netherlands!" He seemed quite proud of this fact, though why humans would sleep on the carcasses of geese but felt insulted if you wanted to sleep on the floor was quite beyond Skalugsuak at the moment. 

"Well," Leendert said into Skalugsuak's quiet contemplation. "The bed's not too shabby, and it looks good enough for two people."

Skalugsuak remembered sleeping in beds, in Gouda, together with Florian and enjoying the experience even though it was warm. He had enjoyed Florian in every way, usually. Even when he was in one of his dramatic tantrums— it opened quite the perspective on a lot of human things.

And then Florian had died of consumption and he hadn't enjoyed much of anything. He went back into the sea because the longing had been too all-consuming, but it had turned out that the sea didn't really help with that either. Much as Muraina had wanted to fight him for the dominance in the waters, Skalugsuak had just given up and so Muraina had healed him until he was better. And when he still hadn't gotten better, Muraina had befriended him--and now he was searching out the fisherman who harpooned him when he couldn't care for his own life and was supposed to get his revenge on him or whatever. Skalugsuak wasn't too sure on that last part.

Muraina wanted him to get out of his funk, and with she it either had to do with fucking, fighting, or food, and he wasn't too sure if they even made a difference.

Leendert seemed to expect an answer. That was rather inconvenient, as Skalugsuak would rather be very emotional and indecisive. He wanted to get over Florian, but at the same time he wanted to keep him forever in his heart, and Muraina's solution of doing both seemed rather insurmountable at the moment. Even though it seemed like sound advice, like all of Muraina's solutions.

"We should look at your feet," Leendert said. "I'm going to ask for some hot water to wash them. And I'm going to make Sven bring up the rest of my luggage. Sit down-- over here, there's space enough for a bucket."

Skalugsuak, too baffled to complain, sat down. It was a relief to get off his feet, even though the pain had stopped hurting and his feet were now just numb. He examined them further. They looked very messy.

Soon enough, Leendert came back with a bucket, bandages, and socks. The latter Skalugsuak had almost forgotten--but they were what made shoes barely wearable. Leendert kneeled in front of him and bid Skalugsuak to put his feet in the water. As Skalugsuak did so, he couldn't help his flinch.

Leendert was gentle, but the water was very hot— burning, almost, and while Skalugsuak had heard of the inert healing powers of water, he had always thought the practice was done with bearable water and not this burning abomination.

"Shh, it only hurts for the moment," Leendert told him and gently stroked down his calves.Skalugsuak shivered, and this time not from the difference in temperature. "It burns out the bad humours," he added.

There was something about that intimacy—the way Leendert took care of his sensitive feet--that was very appealing toSkalugsuak who hadn't had anyone to care for him but a cranky all-seeing eel who was halfway to blind to the truth of his surroundings and had a few of his eyes permanently set to the future—and Muraina didn't count anyway. It got to Skalugsuak.

"Thank you," he said when Leendert took his feet out of the bucket with the burning water and wrapped him gently first into the bandages and then into the socks. A strange emotion welled up inside of him. He had missed touch. As a shark, he didn’t crave it as much as his human form did, but somehow he had gotten used to it before, and it had been missing without him ever realising it. Why would he miss touch as a shark?

Leendert waved it away as if it was nothing. "We should go to the tailor right away tomorrow. Maybe he’ll have something ready-made for someone your size." He stood up with another intense look, gave a last pat to Skalugsuak’s knee, and then left to deal with the rest of his luggage. Then, he brought over slipper shoes—not really adequate for walking, but enough that his feet wouldn’t scape further.

It may have been nothing to him; it was everything to Skalugsuak. It was unobtrusive, in a way, and he should not be counting on his help in further endeavours, especially if they involved making sure the selkie hunter would never hurt one again. He wasn’t yet sure how he would do that—he considered swallowing him whole if he lived close enough to the backwater that would support his change. It was a final solution, and the odds of his survival were abysmal. It hadn’t disturbed him when he’d been planning his quest, but now he was second-guessing his commitment. 

He looked over to the bed. It appeared soft and cozy, if slightly too warm for the best comfort. There was something appealing about just giving in. The path of least resistance certainly went there. And what was wrong with sleeping in the same bed as someone who had invited you to do it?

Leendert reappeared with a fresh coat, this one almost gleaming from the lack of dust. He had with him another overcoat for Skalugsuak, and a large chest of filled with frames of something that were brought by the coach driver, who disappeared before Skalugsuak could inquire where *he* would sleep.

The coat fit him reasonably well for a borrowed item. Too short in length and a bit too large in the shoulders— Skalugsuak could button it, however, and it hid his rather shabby linen shirt from view. A well-made coat, in his inexpert eyes. Leendert crouched down to straighten the hem, and Skalugsuak wanted to— he wanted—

"I wish to go downstairs to see if anyone knows this maker's mark," Skalugsuak said, avoiding his choices like he was getting paid for it. He had always been good at ignoring reality and his wants, both. Muraina would say he’d gotten too good at it, and ask him if he wanted more Whale flesh, the one thing he had still found to revolting to swallow and keep down.

Leendert had yet to know his avoidance mechanisms.

"That’s—okay," Leendert said. "Maybe we should first have a beer together, you're kind of tense."

"Yes," Skalugsuak said. A beer would help with the awkwardness. And maybe it would also help him jump over his own shadow, which was unusually large for a human, and rather small for a shark. He was afraid of finding his hunter, he was afraid of interacting with humans who might steal his pelt, he was afraid to open up again, And he didn’t want to be, he wanted to be brave. He wanted to be someone others (Leendert) could lean on.

There were more people downstairs, now that it was creeping into the evening hours. The barkeep served cold ale and warm mulled ciders, and Skalugsuak opted for an ale.

"And what brings you this far North?" the barkeep asked, caught in his routine. 

"South, actually," Skalugsuak said. "I’ve spent a couple years in the Danish areas."

The barkeep glanced at him and turned to Leendert, then did a double-take and turned back. Without looking, he slid Leendert’s glass of pale ale directly in front of him, precisely measured. "Really? You sound like you spent some time in the Flemish provinces. Well-travelled, then."

The  a le was pale and golden like the scales of Muraina. Skalugsuak took a sip, and felt the numb spread through his mouth and into his throat. Good ale was almost like sucking on a blowfish, and this was good ale.

"I’ve seen a bit of the world," he replied. Most of the bits he’d seen were not the usual travel destinations. "Mostly its seas."

"A fisher, then?" the barkeep asked. When Skalugsuak nodded, he didn’t ask further questions. "Lots of fishers here," he said. 

"I’m looking for a — there’s a harpoon I found," Skalugsuak said. "It has a maker’s mark, and my friend who recognised its like sent me towards here. You don’t happen to know someone who makes harpoon heads? I want to talk to them."

The Barkeep shrugged. Then, he reconsidered. "There was a fellow a few years back, hereabouts…—hey, Jacques! Wasn’t there a guy specialising in fishing craft s at the smithy?"

Further down the bar, a man dressed in oiled clothing looked up from his card game. "Don’t distract me when I’m playing!"

"He’s losing, he’ll be here soon enough," the barkeep told him in an undertone. Then, he finally turned to look at Leendert again. He was very intense looking, something about his clear eyes and the beard— Skalugsuak’s was relieved immediately when he instead focused on cleaning his closes. There was something strangely intense about his regard—a tension that felt different from Leendert’s attention. (He liked Leendert’s more, and couldn’t help but think back to the tender way he had handled his feet. He wouldn’t mind the time they would spend in the same bed at night, at all.)

Skalugsuak listened to Leendert, and how quickly he prevaricated when the barkeeper asked him for his purposes here. He talked about accompanying Skalugsuak on his quest, and while that was true—Leendert had been on the road to this town before they had met. He travelled in a private carriage, even, and that was, if custom hadn’t changed in the past decades, very suspicious. Who was Leendert, to casually put up with a stranger he found on the road?

After the barkeep had given up on getting a straight answer out of him, Skalugsuak quietly took over the questioning and asked the question that had been burning on his mind, "Why are you helping me?"

Leendert stilled. "You don't want me to?" he asked.

"That wasn't my question," Skalugsuak didn't say. How could he, when it was Leendert who had helped him thus far, coming further than he would have on its own. In fact, he was starting to suspect he’d had some supernatural help in finding Leendert’s support. "Your effort on my behalf is appreciated, if overwhelming," he said instead. "I don’t think I could ever repay you adequately." Especially since Skalugsuak had mostly gone on his journey because he couldn’t take Muraina’s constant whining anymore, not because he was particularly focused on revenge. He’d gotten a taste of human life, and now the deep sea paled in comparison.

He probably wouldn’t have fallen in quite such a state of inertia if the wound from the harpoon hadn’t forced him into his skin for such a long time until it finally healed up—and he felt enough about the wound and what it would mean for other selkies to experience the same for Muraina to identify it as his weak spot. Wherefore she focused all her energy on exploiting it, to get him to move out.

"I would still like to know your motivation," Skalugsuak added and looked down on the table. It was old and well-used, polished from the many bowls and humps on its surface. "I’m not likely to come into money. Or talent of any kind."

"You seem to be more versatile than even you know," Leendert said. "I’m not worried about helping you. And even if I were, I wouldn’t begrudge you. That’s not the point!"

"Then what is?" 

Leendert looked away. There was a faint blush on his face—he must have been warm, too. Before Skalugsuak could probe more into this non-answer, he heard, "You were wanting to know about the smithy, I heard. Well, it’s been my brother’s since about, well— six years ago? Niklas, when did Erik take over the old smithy, I can’t remember."

The barkeep threw the dishtowel over his shoulder and looked heavenwards, "It’s gotta be nine years ago in the spring, remember the floods? He took the building because even though it was run-down as fuck, it was the only thing that was dry."

"Huh, I thought the floods were later than that."

Another man, of the group who had sat with the card players piped up, "Your memory’s been going since you were wee-high, it was definitely eight years ago. But you know, that was the weird thing about it, too," he came over, and sat down with the group. "Another one of your fine ales, Niklas! Tell your wife she’s outdone all her previous efforts."

"Tell her yourself," the barkeep grumbled, but went and poured another for the requester.

"Oho, in the doghouse again, eh?—the story of the old smith, well, it’s a mystery, really."

"An old wife’s tale," Jacques interjected.

"You just don’t like it because you know the old stories," the man waved it away. "No feelings about the sea in your book of the Lord. But I tell you, the selkies are as real as my pinkie here. And I’ve never heard a wife tell it. You know, they said the old smith tried to capture himself a selkie—he was a bit mad, you understand, but a generally good smith, did well with barb and that’s a trouble to get at the best of times. We didn’t think much of it when he started…"

"He didn’t start, he was always into harpoons, and shit. You liked it well enough when he crafted you a proper fish knife!"

"—well, whatever. He cast some kind of magic—"

"Don’t let the church or the mayor hear you say such nonsense," Jacques told him. To Skalugsuak, he said, "But he did have some kind of uncanny knowledge of fish. He knew exactly what would bite to what, and where to find the best crop of herring, even though he never set foot on a boat."

"He did set foot on a boat that once," the storyteller added. "And stop interrupting my story, they’ll think me a rambling drunk."

"You are a rambling drunk."

"He made a harpoon, then," Leendert said. "Did he succeed with capturing a selkie?"

"He made a harpoon, out of stonework and hair to hear him tell it, and still came back empty-handed," Jacques said. "No surprise for an unskilled landlubber. But he swore by Ilse’s best ale that he had hit something. He said, he saw it scream in agony, and that he was only scared away by the waves suddenly erupting with all kinds of creatures. We thought he was, you know, off his rocker and trying to seem braver than he was—we didn’t think he’d make it back, it took him months to return and we thought him lost to the sea until, well."

"He came back convinced he had caught something. He was going to go out and find it again, and we shrugged and thought if he was that sick of life, there’d be no stopping him. We didn’t think he would actually catch something, especially not a selkie. And then, on the night of the low tide, we heard him screaming." 

He paused and took a sip of his ale. And with a clear suspicion, Skalugsuak knew where this was leading. He couldn’t have taken his revenge back then, to o torn up from the expertly smithed harpoon barb embedded into his flesh. "He drowned on dry land, in the middle of the night during low tide," the storyteller added. "In the bed of his smithy, right next to his collection of harpoons. They looked corroded and slick with mussels and grime when we found them. His bed was bone-dry, and yet still he drowned. We threw all of the remaining fishing utensils into the brackwater, and exorcised his house before Erik dared to move in."

"Old wives’ tale," Jacques repeated but he seemed shaken.

"Fifteen years ago it was, and I remember finding him to this day," the storyteller said. "It was the revenge of the selkie, let me tell you. It’s no good messing with forces you don’t understand."

The round nodded solemnly. Then, he brightened, "Next round’s on me!" and the gloom vanished. They were all familiar with the capriciousness of the sea.

Skalugsuak blinked, once, twice. This hadn’t been his doing. So who else knew the smith had caught himself a selkie? Who, indeed.

Next to him, Leendert swallowed. When someone asked him for his choice of drink, he shook his head, "I’ll pass, thank you—I’m not used to large amounts of drink, and you will want me to find my bed and not stumble into yours by accident."

None of the men seemed to find his sudden reservation to be notable. Some of them ribbed him lightly for his lightweight constitution, but they urged Skalugsuak to drink all the more.

Skalugsuak didn’t get drunk that quickly. The tiny concentration in his blood didn’t matter in the short run, and in the long run, he simply had a different digestive system than the humans drinking with him. When the evening drew to an end, and Leendert asked to go to their rooms, the barroom was tilting only very slightly. He stumbled into Leendert’s arms, and the human caught him. He was very warm—and contrary to his experience thus far, this time Skalugsuak didn’t mind. Found it delightfully different even. He hadn’t been warm in a long time. 

Leendert heaved him up the stairs, and Skalugsuak didn’t quite know what to do with himself. He wanted to be left outside, in the cold and dark, and yet he wanted Leendert to take care of him even more, and he hadn’t even initially sought him out, Leendert had just… happened to him.

"Why did you drink so much," Leendert complained. And yet still, his hands were tender, and so was Skalugsuak and if he cried right now, he would call the power of the sea upon them and that was the opposite of what he wanted.

"I don’t know," Skalugsuak said, and it came out more like a whine than any kind of explanation. They had offered him a drink, and so he had accepted. It would have been rude not to. 

Leendert sighed, and dragged him into the room and onto the bed. It took the wind out of Skalugsuak’s lungs. He couldn’t breathe, looking up into Leendert’s face.

"What," Leendert asked, self-consciously.

"I’m really drunk," Skalugsuak said, bewildered. 

"Yes," Leendert confirmed. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"You’re very beautiful," Skalugsuak answered, then furrowed his brows, "I don’t understand why I should be so drunk. I don’t get drunk, you see. I make other people drunk."

Leendert looked away. His profile was very beautiful, too. He was young, not long out of his boyhood, and Skalugsuak wondered again what had brought him here. He was tugging at the socks on his feet he had put there earlier, and Skalugsuak let him. 

"I feel like you know me," he said. "You treat me like you know me."

Leendert shook his head. "I think I would remember someone like you," he said.

Skalugsuak smiled. He did remember how to flirt, even though it had been some time since he last practised that skill. "Are you calling me interesting?"

"Yes," Leendert answered, and suddenly he could look up into Skalugsuak’s eyes again. His were a lighter blue, intense like the ice they reminded Skalugsuak of. "Yes, you’re very interesting. What do you think of the tale they told us downstairs?" His hands were on Skalugsuak’s calves again, like a brand, this time, and he had to hitch himself up so that he could take Leendert’s hands in his. 

"It was meant to scare us," he said. There was a small tremble in Leendert’s hands. "I don’t think a selkie murdered the smith."

"How did you get that harpoon head, if the smith has been dead for 15 years?" 

Skalugsuak didn’t know how to explain any of it—that he was a selkie, that the harpoon in his hand was the harpoon the smith had enchanted, and that he had been sent this way by Muraina who surely wanted him to find out that it was her who had gotten revenge on his pursuer, for her own selfish reasons. Perhaps she had even made him find Leendert, so he would have someone to comfort him—because Muraina was cruel as every eel was cruel, but she was also his friend and she cared.

"Are you crying?" Leendert asked, and no, Skalugsuak wasn’t. He couldn’t. Seal tears would stop the transformation, and he wasn’t yet prepared to go back. Seven tears to change back, and he didn’t want to, not yet, not while his business was unfinished.

"No," he said, and later couldn’t have said if it was Leendert who had pulled him or if he went willingly, but he ended up in his arms either way, and his hands carded through his long, silken hair. There was comfort in the closeness, and Skalugsuak swallowed his tears. The saltiness was a surprise. He cleared his throat, and gently pushed Leendert away.

"Thank you," he said, probably very pathetic looking judging from the pitiful way Leendert eyed him. "I don’t know why I am suddenly so upset. I haven’t been this out of sorts since a long time ago."

"It is no hardship for me to have a beautiful man in my arms," Leendert said, completely natural, as if he wasn’t just constantly topping every human interaction Skalugsuak had had, ever. He seemed entirely content to keep giving Skalugsuak more and more trinkets and encouragement, and if he didn’t stop Skalugsuak would be attached to him permanently, like some kind of parasite lapping up both his gifts and his kindness. He deserved better than a broken selkie, surely. And yet Skalugsuak already didn’t want to go.

When Skalugsuak woke up with the dawn, neither of them mentioned last night. There had been no problems sleeping together in the same bed. Skalugsuak still didn’t want to talk about it. Luckily, Leendert didn’t seem inclined to talk either.

Skalugsuak could still smell the sea, and hear its roaring against the shores. The seagulls were complaining, as usual. He was going to visit the old smithy, to reassure himself that the barkeep hadn't been lying.

He needed to see that his pursuer had really died, that the pain was over and done with—that there wouldn’t be an angry sailor appearing 20 years later with a chip on his shoulder and the necessary magic to imprison him for life.

"I’m going to visit the smithy," he told Leendert, who had already dressed. Today, he was in a different outfit again, the light blue coat from yesterday switched to a muddy brown one. It was much less flattering but seemed more robust somehow. He was really very slender. 

Skalugsuak could break him in half easily, even though he was rather delicately built himself. He was a creature from the depths of the sea, pressure from all sides wouldn’t break him whether or not he looked the part. Actually breaking someone, however, would be very suspicious, and if anyone found out... well, the best thing that could happen was that he would probably be blamed for the death of the old smith.

"Alone?" Leendert asked, and though he had only known him for a day, Skalugsuak knew that this was him expressing desire to accompany him. Skalugsuak had thought he would set out alone, but now that the opportunity for company had opened, he was reluctant to deny it.

Leendert was very comforting to have near, especially his sheer unlimited wardrobe (and the way he didn’t mind to drape it on Skalugsuak).

"I wouldn’t mind if you accompanied me there. I just want to see what became of it."

"So you weren’t attacked recently," Leendert said. Did he know? Skalugsuak wasn’t sure if he had, or if he was just...

"It feels like it was yesterday," Skalugsuak defended himself. It was a shabby excuse, and he knew it, but a human could never understand the kind of violation it was—to be forced into just one skin.

"Where did you lose your clothes, then?" 

"In a waterlogged casket at the bottom of the ocean," Skalugsuak replied. "It didn’t survive my journey back here."

"So you really are—" Leendert began, chewed on his words, and then said with a grimace, "destitute."

Skalugsuak had in his satchel the deed to a dock in Amsterdam, which he would have used to go on land if circumstances had been different. There was something leading in Leendert’s questions and he wasn’t sure if he liked the assumption.

"—I mean," Leendert stuttered out, switching nervously between looking Skalugsuak in the eye and over his shoulder. "You’d need someone to provide for you." It was no wonder he was nervous, that was an outright insult. Skalugsuak hadn’t thought his new acquaintance could be so rude, but there was a first time for anything.

"No."

Leendert swallowed and turned bright red. "No?" he repeated, his voice uncomfortably high. "Yes, yes, okay, very sorry."

He should indeed be very sorry, Skalugsuak thought. He was still a two-hundred-year-old selkie, and where was the world coming to if he let himself be lectured like this.

"Thank you for the clothes. And the shoes," Skalugsuak said because he had learned how to be polite from his parents.

Leendert looked down.

"I am going to take a look at the smithy," Skalugsuak said.

"And then?" Leendert asked. "What will you do then?"

Skalugsuak shrugged. He hadn’t thought that far. He had thought he would get captured at least, die perhaps, in a tragedy that would be told for the ages. That had seemed like a nice solution to all his problems, when he had initially set out on his quarry.

"It seems a fool's errand," Leendert said. He was angry, Skalugsuak could tell, but at what he didn’t fathom.

"Yes,"Skalugsuak admitted. "But it is something I have to see through to the end."

Leendert shook his head. He seemed dejected, somehow.

"I’m going to go downstairs and ask for  the directions," Skalugsuak said. That couldn’t have been his entire objections, could it? Skalugsuak wasn’t used to people just letting him do whatever he wanted. He liked— had enjoyed having other people decide what direction he was going, and wasn’t that just like betraying all his roots? A selkie who stayed behind, a selkie who contended to wait at home as long as its pelt was there and he could escape at any moment, if he wished. There was something wrong with him, and he couldn’t count on another stranger wanting his company. 

Skalugsuak shook his head. It was better the way it was now, surely. He was plankter, drifting along the currents.

Leendert had sat on the bed and was staring out of the window, fingers playing with his shirtsleeve. They were both silent.

 

The woman manning the downstairs bar was all too happy to describe the way to the local smithy, and the cobbler. When Skalugsuak asked if she was the person responsible for the beer they had last night, and complimented it greatly, she became even more talkative. She appeared to be glad to expound upon him that the smithy was rather new and did not have many customers among the local fishermen since the smith stayed away from forging harpoons. She thought the whole thing rather superstitious, but was happy to take his hoops for her barrels. Apparently, there’d been a rather unfortunate incident with the former smith, but in her eyes that was no reason to abandon every one of his traditions entirely.

She did not want to be reminded of the old smith at all—crossed herself and muttered, "Like goes to like," which seemed a heartfelt hope for the old smith to rest in hell.

Skalugsuak could only admire her for her excellent taste. She didn’t seem prone to flights of fancy but an excellent judge of character.

Since the cobbler was on his way to the smithy, Skalugsuak stopped there first. The shoes he was wearing were eyed by the cobbler, his wife, and two of their apprentices, and Skalugsuak concluded that they were either unusual or very fancy.

"We don’t have shoes like that here," the cobbler said finally, with a face that could’ve parted the sea.

"I would rather have just normal boots," Skalugsuak said, and couldn’t help his voice going high in question. "These are the charity of a fellow traveller, since my feet were cut on the flintstone fields outside of the town."

One of the apprentices, the smaller one, tugged at the cobbler’s shirt tails, and pointed towards the far end of the shop. It didn’t look like they had many finished wares, as most people had theirs custom-made, but there was a single shelf with shoes.

"Let me see those feet," the cobbler said. He snorted with disdain once he saw the socks Skalugsuak had used to fill them. "Thankfully, you have tiny feet—we might just have some older shoes that are going to fit your size perfectly, but I’m giving them to you under the greatest of duress! This is not my usual way of doing business."

Skalugsuak was pretty sure that he was getting the hang of this normal human existence. The cobbler was protesting more to be sure of his payment, he could tell by the slight smile on the apprentice’s face. 

He paid with the silver pieces he had kept in his bag, and was pretty sure he was getting ripped off, but he felt like he was finally close to finishing his duty. If he didn’t have to kill the hunter that had wounded him for ten years, and trapped him in his seal form, then today was a good day indeed.

Then, outfitted with new, comfortable boots he didn’t have to stuff full of wool, he went on to the building housing the smithy. Much like the cobbler, it was a timber construction, a proper city house—the workroom in the basement and the living quarters in the upstairs housing the family of the master and other dependents. Like many of the Dutch cities, it was surrounded by the water, the channels bearing the smell and feel of the open sea. 

If there was ever a country built for selkies, it was this one. Skalugsuak loved this dichotomy, which he felt reflected in himself. The smell of guano and seaweed was all-encompassing.

He didn’t want to approach the building. Instead, he was now holding up the foot traffic of people walking down the channel streets, the recipient of a couple rude words. The building—relatively new and with a fourth upper floor— was imposing, and he could tell from the chimney smoke and the loud noises escaping to the street that there was a smith at work. What if it all had been a trap to ensnare one of the oldest selkies the human world new? What if he had been duped, first by Leendert and then the normalcy of the town?

Out of the window of the second floor, a little human peeked its nose. It had pushed the curtains aside just a little bit, probably hoping that nobody would notice its adventure, but with the uniform row of windows with perfectly straight curtains this one stuck out like a sore thumb. It pressed its face against the distorted glass planes fogging up the window.

Skalugsuak smiled and stepped forward. If it was a trap—and he was pretty sure it wasn’t—then at least it wasn’t a young selkie tripping into it, but someone who had lived his life. He had missed the hustle and bustle of people who weren’t just focused on eating the carcass in front of his home.

If only the human world wasn’t so lonely without a companion. If only Muraina had the opportunity to visit more often. He turned back to the street and wondered if she would want to visit the channels—certainly a long distance from the waters of the deep, but she might find it interesting nonetheless.

 

The entrance was abandoned, and when he knocked there was no answer. Gingerly stepping into the forge, he discovered it was dark and hot. Not his ideal habitat in the best of circumstances, but especially not when he was expecting the worst around every corner. "Hello?"

"One moment, please!"

Skalugsuak stepped back and watched his surroundings. The hallways of the city buildings were mostly similar in size, but for all of that, they could be very different in their ambiance. There was a landing net next to the umbrella stand, and oil boots on the ground. The air was permeated with all sorts of soot and brimstone.

A few minutes later, after a great sizzling noise and then quiet, a man appeared around the corner. He was just as sooty as the air, and wiped his hands on a spare rag. And then he looked up.

Skalugsuak could see in the darkness of the hallway just as well, probably better, than he could in the daylight, and there was no hiding the selkie eyes. They were round and dark, much closer to the seal eyes than Skalugsuak’s were to the Greenland shark.

"The selkie hunter," the man said. He seemed shocked, awed and relieved at the same time, and Skalugsuak couldn’t help but mirror them.

"I was looking to see if he had caught anyone else," Skalugsuak said. There was a pause, before he continued. "But I heard you had taken over the smithy, Erik. Your name is Erik, yes?" 

"Anyone else— he caught you!" The man seemed exhilarated. "Then it was you who killed him, yes? I should express my thanks! It was through my mother that he discovered the selkies, and I always feared what he would do to get his hands on a live specimen… he was obsessed."

"He did catch me," Skalugsuak said. "But I didn’t manage to kill him then. I came as soon as I healed, but apparently someone had done me justice long before."

The man took him in more closely. 

Skalugsuak wondered what he saw—if he saw the desperation, the loneliness, the misery that had fuelled him to find the hunter that had wounded him and make sure he wasn’t able to hurt anyone else. He didn’t feel like the drained selkie that had stepped foot on land not a day before, but perhaps he looked it.

"My name is Erik, son of Conneely." His outstretched hand had webbing in between his fingers, in contrast to Skalugsuak’s whose hands looked more human. It was strange how inheritance worked sometimes—the smith couldn’t have worked with iron the way he did if he was fully selkie. And yet somehow, his human form looked more selkie than not, more seal-like than Skalugsuak’s form was shark-like.

"Skalugsuak," he said, and shook the hand. It was the same temperature as his, not the warm embrace of Leendert’s. "A pleasure meeting you."

Erik laughed, bright and cheerful. "I’ve never met a selkie with human manners before!"

"I’ve lived on land before," Skalugsuak explained.

The smith’s eyes darkened. "My sympathies," he said, his voice rough.

"It was voluntary."

"Oh," Erik said. He kept on staring as if he couldn’t quite believe the sight in front of him. Skalugsuak felt uncomfortable with his regard. He knew it was unusual for selkies to keep coming back—but he had found companionship on both land and sea, and he wasn’t afraid to stick to his own preferences. He was a creature of the deep sea, yes, but he was also a creature of the land. Traversing both, and yet a stranger in either.

"I have property up the coast," Skalugsuak said. "I lived there with my friend until he died. And then, the selkie hunter caught me when I was going in for a swim." He hadn’t been careful transforming, mad in his grief, and then not being able to change had driven him madder still. Muraina had helped him heal, and as much as he wanted to grouch about the whale fall and the ensuing traffic, the amount of life the death of a whale engendered had helped him further.

"The old smith," Skalugsuak continued carefully. "What exactly happened to him?"

Erik sighed. "I wish I knew. One day, he was forging his irons, banging about with his hammer, and then the next day, he was dead."

"How did you know him?"

"He had found out about my mother," Erik explained. "Of course, by then she was long gone, and I wasn’t really a selkie. Not in the ways he wanted." He shrugged. "Sorry about that. If I was, perhaps he wouldn’t have been after you."

"I wouldn’t have wanted him after either of us," Skalugsuak said. "But what happened? The people at the postal inn talked about a moonless night."

"Low tide. It was the lowest tide of the month, and he drowned in his bed in the second story." Erik swallowed. "I thought it was the selkie that came back to take his revenge. But it was you, wasn’t it? You were the selkie he caught."

"Yes," Skalugsuak admitted.

"And you didn’t come back until now," Erik said. "Then who was it who took revenge? Perhaps it was an entirely unrelated attack? He was a very unpleasant person. Though I don’t suppose many people know the kind of magic you need to drown someone on dry land."

It could’ve been anyone the old smith had wounded, or captured. There was no way of knowing it ten years after the fact, at least not for Skalugsuak who was mostly limited in his magic to the transformations inherent in his nature. Rituals, at least those which would drown a man in his bed, weren’t his forte. But he knew someone who had prepared a ritual for him, one to find his deepest heart’s desire on the shore of the Netherlands—Muraina, down in the deep sea.

She didn’t push him until he was ready. She waited until he was almost ready to come out on his own, to rediscover how it was to taste and feel and experience the world around him again until she sent him on his way.

"I will help you get what you deserve," she said, and he thought that meant revenge, because what else was there to live for?

But then he had discovered the town, Leendert, then he had realised how much he enjoyed being both of his natures—the shark and the human, the selkie as a whole. This was a nice town to live in with its channels to the open sea, the houses built into the floodgates, the selkie hunter who drowned in his sleep.

She had led him around on the nose, to get him where she thought he would thrive.

"I’m sorry," Skalugsuak said. "I just remembered something— you were the one who discovered the body?"

"No, I didn’t go near him, usually. He— my mother was wary of him to the point I feared going near him."

"Your mother was a selkie, then?" Skalugsuak had to ask.

"She sure was," Erik said, and splayed his webbed fingers. "I don’t remember her much, she went rightfully to the sea when I was but small."

Skalugsuak opened his—they were perfectly straight and much less webbed than the smith’s. "The strange thing with the sea—it changes so much, sometimes it’s not strictly been there in the first place."

Erik huffed, and gestured for the hand. Skalugsuak gave it over willingly, and while the smith’s hands were warm and calloused, they didn’t provide the kind of feeling Leendert’s mere glance could. Erik inspected the hands closely, but Skalugsuak’s hands didn’t suddenly reveal the skin grown tighter between the fingers. Sharks didn’t have webbed hands, and so Skalugsuak didn’t have them either.

"And the body—it was discovered here, in this building?"

"Yes," Erik said, still paying close attention to his hands. 

"I wonder if there were salt residues on the floors. Was there something that looked strange to the first responders?"

"They said, the air smelled of the sea—but that’s not unusual out here."

"No, it’s not," Skalugsuak admitted. "I suspect someone took revenge on my behalf, but it’s only conjecture. My friend sent me here to find my purpose, and I think it wasn’t exactly meant to lead here."

“Excuse me,” the voice of someone familiar floated into the smith’s hallway. Leendert had arrived as if on cue. "Is there anyone home?"

"Your friend?" Erik asked.

Skalugsuak shook his head. Then nodded. "Well, not the one who—" he didn’t continue the sentence because if he spoke the words they’d become more real. Muraina had taken his revenge for him. He hadn’t realised he was anything but a very grumpy roommate to her—and yet somehow he didn’t want to feel touched about something he only learned recently. "He’s human," Skalugsuak said instead.

"Ah," Erik said. His face was full of complicated emotions; pity, longing, curiosity. He didn’t ask the question that was clearly burning on his mind, and Skalugsuak didn’t want to tell him that selkies could choose to stay with humans. Not all of them would be happy, of course, but Skalugsuak had been very content with his humans.

"I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help," Skalugsuak said, sudden even to him. He didn’t want Leendert to see how—to what lengths he might have been pushed, had circumstances been different. 

"You cleared up plenty," Erik said. "I was willing to live here until the sea swallowed me, too. It’s good that I don’t have to fear being drowned by ghost anymore." His eyes crinkled, as if he wanted to be joking and wasn’t sure it was allowed.

"Hello?" Leendert repeated, and then opened the door. He blinked, against the darkness of the rooms. Skalugsuak wasn’t sure he saw them very clearly.

"You came," Skalugsuak said, nonsensically. He felt his shoulders relax at the sight of him, in his ridiculous coat and the fancy boots that hadn’t just been so in Skalugsuak’s imagination.

The smith cleared his throat. Skalugsuak tried to look at him through Leendert’s eyes—even though they shared the same heritage, there were not many similarities in their looks. Except for the dark eyes and the long hair, and their red tears of blood.

"I was on my way back," Skalugsuak said. He stretched out his hand, as if to offer it to Leendert. Even while he was doing it, he doubted its welcome. Some things were reserved for closer acquaintances, and not near strangers. 'You slept in the same bed,' his mind provided as an excuse, or an explanation, perhaps. He wanted Leendert to take his hand, and yet, when Leendert did, he couldn’t look at him anymore. He tried not to pay attention to the contact and looked at the smith again.

"This is the forge they’d been talking about yesterday." 

"Oh, have they been scaring the travellers again?" Erik laughed. "There are certain stories that get gossiped about every time someone professes even vague interest. No wonder you came here to look at the place."

"I wanted to see if he had really died or if the story was just one of those tall tales."

"He did live here—or this gentleman, the smith, is also in on the joke."

Erik laughed again. He seemed a genial person, and Skalugsuak decided he liked him. "Even with all the fishermen with their yarn, it’s a nice city to live in, usually," Erik said. "Close to water. The trade is on the upswing again, and there’s no tyrannical government in office. A lot of interesting people to meet from all over the world." He nodded towards Skalugsuak.

"Are you trying to sell me on it?"

"Worse places to settle," the smith said, and grabbed his neck in embarrassment. "It’d be nice to have a few more, you know, around the place, 'specially because it’s such a convenient place with the sea in front of your door."

"I’ll think on it," Skalugsuak promised.

 

Outside, the air was fresh and the sky was clear. Skalugsuak turned around to look at the house again, but nothing indicated that at one point it had belonged to a cursed man, a selkie-hunter. He was dead and well-deserved at that. There was nothing sinister in that house now, nothing that he could feel, and yet he only felt relief leaving it behind.

The water in the channel glistened in the sunlight. Next to him was Leendert, who was still holding on to his hand. He didn’t want to let go.

Skalugsuak slowly inched closer to the channel. He wasn’t going to hurry, in case someone was watching. Even Muraina couldn’t have drowned someone on dry land without certain preparations. The salt and shell sediment would have washed off in the rains of the past several years, but there’d need to be a sea water access underneath the building to support the magic she was capable of. Everything here smelled like the sea. Drunk, at night, you could fall into one of the channels and float right out into the deep waters. 

Really, the smith was right: It was ideal for selkies like him and Skalugsuak. He peaked underneath his long hair to Leendert, who hadn’t remarked on his trip to the house of the smith, nor on the conversation that had clearly included some information Skalugsuak wasn’t sure wouldn’t frighten him away. 

Leendert looked like he was absorbed into observing their surroundings—and they were indeed very beautiful. The houses were neatly lined up, the street was cobbled evenly, and even the trees and railing that lined the channel all the way to the next bridge gave the street a charming look.

Skalugsuak looked for the sun, he didn’t quite know how to adjust his calculations for the tides and the moon phase and the position of the sun both helped—it was not quite low tide, but he should be able to see the storm drainage system if the tide was going down.

He hung his head over the railing, not quite as unobtrusive as he would have liked—but yes! There was a pipe running right underneath the house. It didn’t matter if it led to the canalisation system, still new for a city this far north, or if it was a water reservoir for the times when the overflow would need to be captured. It was there, and so Muraina would have had access to the people living above, especially if she prepared herself during high tide. A bit further away, next to the brown stones of the second bridge crossing the channel, stairs went into the water.

"Quite ingenious," he said. The ideal place for a selkie to live-- this city was almost built into the sea. Water and land, and drainage systems to mitigate the worst of the flooding. A city built for the everchanging tides.

"What is?" Leendert asked. He, too, was looking down at the water surface down in the channel. "I don’t see anything out of the ordinary."

Skalugsuak didn’t know how to turn back time to swallow his words instead of voicing them, and so he said, "It’s always good to live in a city with good waste management."

Leendert looked at him, clearly disbelieving. His mouth twitched, and then stretched into a smile. "If you say so."

They were still holding hands. Skalugsuak started walking, back into the direction of the inn. He had cleared out his troubles, and now he was interested in what had brought Leendert to a town he was clearly not familiar with. He speculated some type of merchant trade, because of the rich material he was wearing, but Skalugsuak had little knowledge of what people did with their lives. He’d always been rather artistic in his interests, and so had Florian.

Leendert sobered up. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again. Finally, he said, "I thought you left."

"I did leave," Skalugsuak replied.

"No, I mean—back into the sea."

"What," Skalugsuak said, and a cold rush went over him. There was no way—Leendert had found out—when did he—why hadn’t he—

"You’re a selkie, after all. That’s what they do, don’t they?" Leendert said, and he looked small in his extravagant clothing. "They go back to the sea. So. My question: Will you be returning soon?"

"How—" Skalugsuak asked, and didn’t know if he wanted to know. His pelt was safely in his bag—or was it? Had he checked it before leaving the inn? Had he checked it after leaving the cobbler? 

"You were fairly obvious about it, with your—" Leendert gestured at him. "No, that’s not right. My carriage came just over the hill as you emerged out of the sea. I could see you clearly when you came out of the water with your…pelt, and your satchel. It was quite the shock, and then when I came closer, I recognised you."

"Recognised me?"

"I have a painting. Several paintings, actually, but there is one I have with me right now, and it shows, well, quite clearly, it’s you."

Skalugsuak was silent. "Florian of Gouda," he said finally.

"Yes, he’s my great-uncle," Leendert admitted. "You were with him for longer, weren’t you?"

"Yes," Skalugsuak said, and felt his throat close up. "I was with him until he died."

"You stayed with him until he died?" There was a note of longing in Leendert’s voice, and Skalugsuak told himself that he was a fool, again and again.

"Can I see the painting?" he asked.

Leendert let go of his hand, and Skalugsuak felt the loss of warmth and intimacy. He didn’t know what he wanted, if he was longing more for the past and projecting his desires upon the poor nephew of his past lover, or if he liked Leendert for his own.

He wanted to see the painting even so. Florian had always been painting scenes that Skalugsuak didn’t find all that compelling. Seldom he could be interested in the surface of the sea, when the depths were so much more alluring.

"Yes, sure," Leendert said. "It’s in our—my room at the inn."

In the distance, they could already see the first outbuilding. And yet it was awkward, crossing the distance to the inn. Skalugsuak felt self-conscious walking alongside Leendert who had discovered who he was from the moment he first saw him. Was that why he had been so courteous? But why hadn’t he said something?

The woman manning the front was still present, and asked Skalugsuak if he had found what he was looking for. He showed off his new boots, but when she asked if she should send up a refreshment, he turned down the kind offer and hurried after Leendert. When he entered the room they were sharing, Leendert had already made his way through the heavy chest and had pulled out a linen scroll. Skalugsuak was familiar with the scrolls—Florian had liked to paint on linen as much as wood, even though the prevalent attitude was that wood was far superior for the oil paintings he favoured.

When Leendert unrolled the painting, he couldn’t help but gasp. This was not one of the paintings he remembered—and he would have remembered it. There was a figure, unmistakably him, staring out of the window onto the ocean. Only his face was light up, and his eyes had an otherworldly shine to them. Skalugsuak would have said he looked constipated, but to a viewer who wasn’t familiar with the mimicry of his face it probably conveyed a different emotion. The sea was dark and stormy, and looked as if it was prepared to swallow entire cities.

He only remembered the bed. They had used it often, and not only for sleeping.

"It’s only one in a series," Leendert said. "This is my personal favourite, but other people don’t seem to like it as much."

"And you recognised me from it," Skalugsuak said, still faintly disbelieving.

Leendert blushed. "There are other paintings, too. Granduncle liked to paint you." Skalugsuak didn’t remember that. He usually was quite bored sitting for Florian. Leendert cleared his throat, and then continued, "There’s also a painting of a whale in the bay of Amsterdam, which I think might be you, too."

"No," Skalugsuak said. "That’s not—I remember that painting, and that wasn’t me."

"So you really are my granduncle’s selkie."

"Didn’t you suspect all along?" 

"It’s something different to have it confirmed," Leendert said. He touched the painting softly, as if it really was something precious. "And I doubted myself, when I came nearer and you were—well. As you were."

Skalugsuak stayed quiet. "I miss him quite desperately," he said finally.

"I only remember him a little bit," Leendert admitted. "But he was a large influence on my life. I trade in art and other curiosities, you see."

"There are times when I couldn’t differentiate between missing him, and missing the change," Skalugsuak confessed. Then, his mind caught up on what Leendert had been saying. Other curiosities, like selkie pelts perhaps? The quiet despair of always needing to examine the intentions of everyone he met welled up inside of him. He didn’t want Leendert to betray him, and yet inevitably, he needed to prepare for the worst.

"You— did you want to stay?" Leendert asked.

"No," Skalugsuak said. That was a lie, of course. Skalugsuak always wanted to stay with people who cared for him, that was his fatal flaw. He might have even stayed with someone who would steal his pelt, at least if it was someone like Leendert. It was a hard realisation to come to, after half your life had been lived.

Leendert swallowed. "You’ll be returning to sea soon, then." Skalugsuak could smell the salt in the air, and this time it wasn’t sea salt.

"Why are you crying?" Skalugsuak said. 

"Fuck you, I’m not crying," Leendert said. His nose sounded clogged, and if he was not crying right now, then he was very close. "You’re going to leave again, aren’t you? Aren’t you?" 

Skal didn’t know what to say. He was of the sea, and the sea was of him. He was going to return to the ocean, always, but he had assumed that Leendert wouldn’t know. Or if he had known and recognized him as a selkie, that he would try to keep him trapped without recourse.

He set his satchel down on the nearest surface. The pelt was a comfortable weight inside of it. He knew it was there, safe. He had left it in this room before. Leendert could have gotten up and hidden it away at any time, and yet he didn’t. Yet here he was, trying not to show emotions.

"It’s foolish, I guess," Leendert said, and his voice was again calm. "I’ve barely known you for a day. And here I want you to stay for someone boring like me."

"I’m boring, too, trust me," Skalugsuak said in lieu of something better. Gently, he moved forward. "And I’m old enough to take care of myself. It’s rotten work, there’s not much rewarding about it."

"Don’t try to placate me when what you want is to leave," Leendert said. "I enjoy it when it’s you. I want to explore what can be, and it feels terrible to be thwarted by—nature."

Skalugsuak brushed against Leendert’s hand, then dared to touch it. Once again, it was warmer, scorching against skin that was used to colder temperatures. "I did consider settling here. I haven’t lived on the surface in some time—and this is an ideal city for selkies. I wouldn’t want you to be obligated to me, though."

"It would not be an obligation," Leendert said. "It would be a pleasure."

Skalugsuak looked away first, not able to take the intensity. His gaze naturally fell onto the window, looking out to the marshes, and then further, the sea. He had a feeling that Muraina had intended this—and while he was slightly indignant about his friend meddling, he understood the impulse. He needed to move away from the cave in which he had been hiding. 

This way, he could join in both of his halves, the shark and the human. He couldn’t wait to hunt down his property, and he wouldn’t mind keeping Leendert as his own. He felt the beckoning call of the sea—and instead, went for a soft kiss. "Let’s see what will come," he said, against warm lips. 

**Author's Note:**

> Some things of note that maybe weren't apparent enough in the text:
> 
> This is set during the 1660s in the Dutch Republic at its largest expanse, more specifically Rotterdam whose city plan around that time can be seen [here](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/Blaeu_1652_-_Rotterdam.jpg).
> 
> There are a few underwater details in Skalugsuak's narration that might need explaining:  
> \-- whale falls (the carcass of a cetacean that has fallen into the deep ocean floor. They can create complex localized ecosystems that supply sustenance to deep-sea organisms for decades)  
> \-- the wound Skal had to suffer interfered with his breathing system, because I based much of his biology on whales and/or humans who'd have to go up to breathe some of the time, specifically the pressure issue which in human's can lead to so-called diver's disease.  
> \-- How does Skal know about photoluminescence? Magic. (But also because the deep sea is full of very creepy things)
> 
> Skalugsuak is named after the first greenland shark selkie according to an Inuit legend (it's a family name), and Leendert is named after a Dutch entrepreneur whose father built a shipping empire.


End file.
